Reviews & Short Features

REVIEWS OF BOOKS The Irrepressible Conflict, 1850—1865 (A History of American Life, vol. 7). By ARTHUR CHARLES COLE, professor of history, Western Reserve University. (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1934. xv, 468 p. Illustrations. $4.00.) In The Irrepressible Conflict Professor Cole has produced another of those volumes of American Life which attempt to depict the life of a people in its multifarious aspects without recourse to " history " as it has so long been viewed. Needless to remark, as has been said in most of the reviews of the volumes which have previously appeared, this is a difficult task. No one can appreciate " history," the recon struction of the past, by reading alone; he must bring a generous measure of imagination to the task and fill in from his own experience the gaps necessarily left in any narrative. Without this individual contribution of the reader the strongest efforts of the historian fail to effect their purpose. If, however, the author provides sufficient stimu lus, paints enough of the background, the task of reconstruction is simplified and the reader can be carried along, reliving another period with a minimum of personal endeavor. The test, then, of an example of the " new history's " success lies in whether the author has brought to the reader enough of descrip tive detail to make reconstruction simple — practically unconscious or subconscious — and yet has abstained from dragging in so much material that the reader becomes bogged. To a considerable degree The Irrepressible Conflict meets the test. It does not require an undue amount of contribution by the reader to feel himself back in the days when the clash of two economic systems was hovering near, nor to get something of what life must have meant to those who lived through the Civil War. As yet no one of the contributors to this series has succeeded wholly in weaving the story into a continuous whole; all of the nar ratives have been episodic — some more and some less. Mr. Cole's volume, I should say, is one of the less episodic because he does achieve a degree of integration and his transitions are relatively easy. One does not have the feeHng that here are separate chapters any one of 328 1934 COLE: THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 329 which could stand alone without the rest as a fairly complete whole. But there still remains to be done the ideal presentation — an ideal perhaps always to be hoped for but never attained. Covering the years from 1850 to 1865, this book deals with many of the activities which made up the everyday life of a people. Some of the chapters try to take in the whole sweep of the country. The introductory chapter entitled " Prosperity and Panic " treats, as one woidd suspect, of the economic life of the fifties — its material ad vance, its shifts in mechanical methods, its speculative boom, and its crash. The extent of the country and its variety of interests, habits, modes of living, and all the rest, necessitate separate treatments of broad sections with attempts to differentiate between smaller areas in those sections. So, for example, " The Land of Chivalry " and " The South Militant " are, as the headings indicate, descriptions of Dixie, its " peculiar " institution, and the effect of that institution upon its thinking and way of living. " The Struggle for the New West " deals with the trek toward the setting sun and the conflict of North and South over its domination, while " Farm and Field" shows agricultural development progressing from the older west to the newer west of the Mississippi Valley and beyond. Immigration, education, the church, advance in " Health and Happiness" and nascent friction between labor and capital, " The Growing Pains of Society," all come in for treatment, and " Fanatic and Doughface " tells about the last approaching crisis about to be precipitated between plantation economy, supported by sentiment if not by the intelligent self-interest of a struggling small-farmer class, and an industrial and agricultural economy of North and West. Four chapters tell the story of life in war time. Here there has to be a pretty sharp division between the description of the North and the South since, in reality, there were two nations, impinging upon one another in nonmilitary ways, but essentially separate. Despite the fact that the author has used discrimination in his choice of illustrative material, there is much detail and, so far as pos sible without too seriously interfering with the continuity of the story, he has allowed contemporaries to tell their impressions in their own words. No two writers would select the same events to bring out the picture and none could say that either was right or wrong, so, to express an opinion about some of the selections is not implying 330 REVIEWS OF BOOKS SEPT. criticism. Nevertheless one wonders why the clipper ship should be, by implication at least, ascribed alone to New England (p. 10) and why the oceanographic work of Matthew Fontaine Maury is not con nected with the marvelous feats of those beautiful craft. So again, there might be raised the question why the Kansas strife is tied wholly to the slavery issue (p. 85-87) and the land issue only brought in in another connection (p. 113). It can be understood why Illinois figures so prominently in fur nishing illustrative material, but other pioneer states, like Minnesota, which gets but slight mention, or Iowa or Wisconsin, could equally well have been drawn upon. Indeed, if there is a serious lack it would seem to be in a certain neglect of the fringes of settlement, although the reader is taken by stage routes to remote parts and dips into the mining camps of the frontier. But, as I remarked, no two would use the same emphasis or call upon the same illustrations. There are reproductions of contemporary drawings, cartoons, photographs and the like, and there is the usual excellent critical bibliography. Mr. Cole's book measures up well with the better volumes of the series. LESTER B. SHIPPEE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA MINNEAPOLIS The Frauds Preston Blair Family in Politics. By WILLIAM ERNEST SMITH, Ph. D., professor of American history, Miami Univer sity. In two volumes. (New York, The Macmillan Com pany, 1933. xi, 516, vi, 523 p. Illustrations. $7.50.) The political careers of Francis Preston Blair, Sr., and of his two sons, Montgomery Blair and Francis Preston Blair, Jr., extend over nearly fifty years of American history, and those fifty years are the eventful ones from the beginning of Jackson's administration to the end of the reconstruction era. Since the Blairs were very prominent politically and since they shifted their party affiliations and their places of residence several times during this period, any complete account of their careers must cover all parties and many sections. For that reason the author of the Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics may, perhaps, be pardoned for making his two long volumes almost a political history of the United States during that long period, 1934 SMITH: BLAIR FAMILY IN POLITICS 331 from a Blair family viewpoint, it is true, but with an almost confusing wealth of detail. Mr. Smith has had access to all the Blair family material, a great mass of manuscript hitherto scarcely used, and has spent many years in research. His book is the first real attempt to place the activities of the Blairs against a complete background of the events of their period, and the result is illuminating, not only as a picture of the Blair family, but as a discussion of the perplexing decisions everyone interested in politics must have faced in the years when the slavery question complicated every issue. The Blairs were Jacksonian Demo crats, followed Van Buren and Benton in opposition to Calhoun, and became in turn Free Soilers, anti-Nebraska Democrats, and Repub licans. After the Civil War they were anti-radical advisors of Andrew Johnson, and they swung back into the Democratic party vdth the failure to create a new party in 1866. Since the Blair family came from Kentucky to Washington and the second generation settled in Missouri in the forties, both East and West were the scenes of their political efforts. Perhaps the most interesting part of Mr. Smith's work is the great light thrown on Missouri politics immediately before and during the Civil War period by the study of the political career of Francis Preston Blair, Jr. Only occasionally are there chapters of especial interest to those work ing in northwestern or Minnesota history. The chapter on the case of Dred Scott is valuable because it includes material from the papers of Montgomery Blair, who argued the case in the United States Supreme Court. The Blairs were extremely active in the organiza tion of the Republican party, and Francis Preston Blair, Jr., trav eled extensively in the North and the Northwest preparing the ground for the campaign of 1860. His speeches in St. Paul and in St. An thony had such effect that they called forth a complimentary letter from Abraham Lincoln. Near Lexington, Minnesota, Blair met, for the first time, Carl Schurz, who was on the same sort of speaking tour, and they discussed western politics over a picnic lunch on the side of the road. After the return of the Blairs to the Democratic party, because of their dislike for radical reconstruction measures, Francis Preston Blair, Jr., was a vice presidential candidate in 1868, placed on the ticket to secure western votes. So the history of the family is identified with that of the West in many ways.

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